Monica Chew

Monica Chew (she/her) is an Oakland-based composer and pianist. She is the founder of We Track Foibles, LLC, which is devoted to shining a light on equity issues in classical music through https://we-had-no-idea.org/.  She celebrates presenting rarely performed music and new works from around the world. A “gifted player with an affinity for deeply sensitive expression” (Whole Note), her playing is “wonderfully delicate, like tissue” (International Pianist). She started composing in 2017 and couldn’t be happier about it. Her work has been commissioned by Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Community Women’s Orchestra of Oakland, Masterworks Chorale, and Gabriela Lena Frank’s Creative Academy for Music and featured as part of the Darkwater Festival, Verdant Vibes, Hot Air Music Festival, Sonic Harvest, and Vox Novus. Her first string quartet, Delayed Send, was premiered by Friction Quartet and reviewed as “monumental” and “stunning” by San Francisco Classical Voice. Prior to 2015, she neglected piano for nearly a decade to work as a principal software engineer on security and privacy at Mozilla and Google after receiving her Master of Music from SF Conservatory of Music and a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley. She lives in Oakland with her husband, cat, an 1899 Steinway B, and a clavichord.